Walleye easier to find in the fall
Finding walleyes in river systems during the summer months can be a challenge. Warm water and low flows that are typical for that time of year allow fish to be in a wide range of settings. That changes with the arrival of fall, when walleyes begin a movement to predictable cold-water locations, one triggered by both higher flows and cooler water.
“Usually around early-to-mid-fall we’ll experience rain that begins to elevate the flow,” says Scott Fairbairn, a veteran river walleye angler who lives on the banks of the Mississippi River in Hager City, Wisc. “It’s a natural response for walleyes to move upriver when the flows increase. Now, walleyes that were scattered over a variety of areas begin to move to more classic locations.”
Fall rains appear most years, but not always. But the other driving force is water temperature, and it will cool off, rain or no rain. This, in Fairbairn’s experience, is the more significant fall factor.
“Like many river systems, the Mississippi River’s forage base is driven by shad,” he says. “When the water drops below 60 degrees, shad will move to seek warmer water. Backchannel areas are the first to cool, so the cooler water draws them out of these hard-to-fish areas, along with the walleyes that were there feeding on them.”
Fairbairn says that when you get the combination of cooling water and higher flows, it’s like throwing the “on” switch.
“Classic barrier areas like dam tailraces and creek mouths, places that were a dead zone, suddenly turn on,” he notes. “And now you’ve got the fish cornered.”
Once in these areas, walleyes tend to stay there from fall through the winter. Tailrace areas typically have current seams that congregate fish, flow edges formed by the discharges from dam gates and hydroelectric power plants. Flows change often, depending on rain, power production and in-service gates. So, though there are concentrations of fish there, the day-to-day challenge of finding them under fluctuating conditions remains.
Though Fairbairn’s experiences relate mostly to the Mississippi River, they apply to western Pennsylvania rivers like the lower (navigable) Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio.
Susquehanna River guide Dave Neuman also finds a connection between gizzard shad and fall walleye location. As water temperatures drop toward the 50-degree mark, shad move downriver toward impounded sections (where the water is warmer). A percentage of them are pulled through the dam’s power turbines, to the eagerly waiting walleyes below. It’s a window that typically lasts three to four weeks.
During early fall, on the free-flowing middle Allegheny River I find walleyes in tailout areas of long pools, areas right above the riffles. They hide in tuffs of eelgrass, picking off soft jerkbaits like Case’s Sinkin’ Salty Shad twitched above them.
By mid-to-late fall, they’ve moved into long, deeper pools with light current. Bucktail jigs and tube jigs pitched to the shoreline often pick off fish holding along quick-dropping banks as the boat drifts along.
Hard jerkbaits like Lucky Craft’s Pointers are also excellent river walleye offerings when river walleyes are in light currents, especially in areas three-to-five feet deep.
Recently my friend, Tom Ference, picked off several nice walleyes lightly twitching jerkbaits over such areas.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle
